SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - California’s leading small business association released on December 26, 2023. its list of the top five compliance headaches hitting small business owners in 2024.

“California small business owners are no different from their counterparts elsewhere in the nation in struggling to find qualified employees and in dealing with inflation,” said John Kabateck, California state director for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). “What does separate them from other small business owners in other states, however, is having to live with a Legislature that takes an almost sadistic delight in hamstringing them further with more and more regulatory compliance, and 2024 shows no letting up.”

The five soon-to-be laws are:

SB 553 (Cortese)--Workplace Violence Prevention Plan. Effective July 1, 2024.
This bill requires employers to establish, implement and maintain a workplace violence prevention plan and record information in a violent incident log, the post-incident response and internal workplace violence injury investigation. The log must include: the date, time and location of an incident, a detailed description of an incident, a classification of who committed an incident, the type of incident, including whether an incident involved physical, verbal, sexual or animal attacks, the consequences of an incident such as medical treatment received, whether security or law enforcement was contacted and the contact information of the individual completing the violent incident log.

AB 2188 (Quirk)--Discrimination in Employment: Use of Cannabis. Effective January 1, 2024.
Passed last year but going into effect on January 1, 2024, this bill amends California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by making it unlawful for an employer to terminate, penalize or otherwise punish an employee for cannabis use outside the workplace. Existing law prohibits an employee from being impaired by cannabis in the workplace. One of the challenges for employers, however, is that since there is currently no reliable testing method for determining if an individual is impaired by cannabis, the thresholding for proving such impairment is extremely difficult to meet.
 

SB 700 (Bradford)--Discrimination in Employment: Use of Cannabis. Effective January 1, 2024.
This bill amends California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by making it unlawful for an employer to request information from an applicant for employment pertaining to the applicant’s prior use of cannabis unless obtained from the applicant’s criminal history. Takeaway from a recent NFIB California Podcast guest: Don’t ask about an applicant’s cannabis usage history. (NFIB does not provide legal advice. For legal advice about compliance with these or other laws, we recommend consulting with an attorney or human resource specialist.)

SB 616 (Gonzalez)--Paid Sick Leave. Effective January 1, 2024.
This bill increases paid sick leave from three to five days a year. Paid sick leave can still be front loaded and the current accrual methodologies remain in place.

SB 848 (Rubio)--Reproductive Loss Leave. Effective January 1, 2024.
This bill amends California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by making it unlawful for an employer to refuse to grant a request by an eligible employee to take up to five days of reproductive loss leave. The leave must be taken within a three-month window from the time of the loss. A reproductive loss event can include a failed adoption, failed surrogacy, miscarriage, stillbirth or unsuccessful assisted reproduction.

Keep up with the latest on California small-business news at www.nfib.com/california or by following NFIB on Twitter @NFIB_CA or on Facebook @NFIB.CA.

For 80 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since its founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.